The Chernobyl tragedy: Second from disaster
The Chernobyl tragedy: Second from disaster

01:23 a.m. Having instantly assessed the situation, the senior operator switches on the emergency toggle switch AZ5, and the control rods rush down to reduce power. The hopeless tragedy of the situation is that this does not eliminate the impending catastrophe, but rather accelerates it and leads to irreversible consequences.

The graphite displacers are at the ends of the control rods. When they are immersed in the reactor, graphite provokes an increase, not a decrease in power, so almost instantly it increases not in 2 or 3 times, but in hundreds of times.

The vapor pressure exceeded the critical level and began to squeeze the control rods of the reactor. Power reached a critical level, irreversibly transforming the reactor into an erupting volcanic crater…

There will be an explosion in a second. None of the employees who were at that moment at the station could even imagine its catastrophic consequences, not only for themselves and the station as a whole, but also on the destructive scale of planetary infection.

Valery Hodemchuk, buried under the ruins of an exploding reactor whose body could not be found, will have never known about them. Vladimir Shashenok, who died several hours after the explosion from numerous injuries resulting from collapsed reactor structures, will not recognize too

Dozens of engineers, engine drivers, electricians, as well as firemen who were the first to arrive at the scene of the tragedy, miners who pumped contaminated water to prevent it from entering the Dnieper basin will not know the real causes of the disaster.

The soldiers of the internal troops who were thrown to liquidate the consequences of the accident will not recognize them, the military, ordinary drivers, medical personnel, police officers, metro builders, volunteers, who were in the immediate vicinity of the exploding reactor during the first hours and days of the tragedy, will not recognize them. Some will die immediately after receiving a high dose of radiation, others will die in agony..